Dark star

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A dark star is a hypothetical star . Like other stars, dark stars are mainly made up of hydrogen and helium . In contrast, energy generation does not take place via hydrogen burning or other nuclear fusion processes . Instead, the energy is created through the destruction of dark matter .

Power generation

WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) are candidates for dark matter and could be their own antiparticles . If the WIMPs collide inside a star and destroy each other in the process, they are a potential source of energy, even though they only make up 0.1 percent of the stellar mass. Therefore, dark stars could be the first stars to light up as Population III objects in the universe .

Hypothetical properties

Simulation calculations suggest that dark stars show the photometric and spectroscopic properties of giant stars with a diameter of around 10 astronomical units at a surface temperature of 10,000 Kelvin . In the further development accrete the stars on matter from their surroundings and the possibility to crowds of up to one million solar masses reached at a brightness of up to 10 billion times the sun . These objects in the early universe would be within range of the James Webb Space Telescope . After consuming the dark matter, the stars would collapse into a black hole and are therefore potential sources for the supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Katherine Freese, Tanja Rindler-Daller, Douglas Spolyar, Monica Valluri: Dark Stars: A Review . In: Astrophysics. Solar and Stellar Astrophysics . 2015, arxiv : 1501.02394v2 .
  2. ↑ Tanja Rindler-Daller, Michael H. Montgomery, Katherine Freese, Donald E. Winget, Bill Paxton: Dark Stars: Improved Models and First Pulsation Results . In: Astrophysics. Solar and Stellar Astrophysics . 2014, arxiv : 1408.2082v2 .
  3. ↑ Andrea Maselli, Pantelis Pnigouras, Niklas Gønlund Nielsen, Chris Kouvaris, Kostas D. Kokkotas: Dark stars: gravitational and electromagnetic observables . In: Astrophysics. Solar and Stellar Astrophysics . 2017, arxiv : 1704.07286v1 .